how to make | Learn how to make soap!

Inspiration here. I saw this paper on Paper Mojo and thought it would make a wonderful swirl in soap! So here’s how I did it.

You’ll need a slow tracing/moving recipe. Something high in olive oil, low in castor and low in hard oils/butters will work.

The Slow Moving Recipe:
Olive oil – 12 oz
Lard – 12 oz
Coconut oil – 8 oz
Rice bran oil – 4 oz

Water – 11 oz
Lye – 4.98

I used charcoal, spirulina powder, sandlewood powder and rose clay to color the soap.

Make your lye solution and melt the solid oils. Add the liquid oils to the melted oils and let everything cool down to about 115. While things are cooling down you can measure out the natural colorants into each of their containers. I added some water to hydrate the colors for easier dispersion and to hydrate the clay.

Make sure your molds and squeeze bottles are ready to go. You don’t have to use squeeze bottles…I just thought it would be easier to line up the color pours in straight lines.

Bring your soap to a really thin trace. If you can recognize emulsion before you get to trace…that’s even better.

Divide the soap into the different containers. I believe I did about 3/4 cup for each color.

Pour all of the soap into squeeze bottles. Again…you don’t have to use squeeze bottles…I just thought it would make things easier.

Pour a layer of uncolored soap into your mold.

Rotating between all of the colors and white…layer the lines until you use all of your soap batter. You don’t have to pay attention that closely as you go along. But when you get to the surface of the soap make sure you have each color visible and that you try and have light colors touching dark so you have plenty of contrast.

Make sure the lines are going all in one direction.

Now its time to swirl! Using a small spatula or a craft stick we’re going to swirl through the lines.

Here’s a line drawn so you can see how I drug the utensil.

Now mirror that move. Start back up at the top.

Repeat that down the soap.

So that’s the peacock swirl! I haven’t had a chance to cut it yet but will post pics when I do. Next I want to try it with peacock colors and round out the humps a bit more like the paper. But this is the general idea.

Moya, Minnie and I also wanted to do a two colored soap scented with lavender and colored with Fuchsia Lab Color from Bramble Berry.

The Recipe:

Palm oil – 10 oz
Coconut oil – 10 oz
Olive oil – 6 oz
Rice bran oil – 4 oz
Castor oil – 2 oz

Water – 10 oz
Lye – 4.57 oz (6% SF)
Sodium lactate – .6 oz (I miscalculated the SL for this batch and used only .2 oz. I had in my mind that we were making 1 lb batches. OOPS! Use .6-1 oz and you’ll have much smoother soap.)

1 oz lavender fragrance oil

Step 1 – Make the lye solution.

Step 2 – Measure out the oils into your crock pot. Go ahead to turn on your crock pot to high. Here’s a time saving tip from Moya. If you aren’t using any brittle or really hard oils or butters such as cocoa butter or palm kernel you don’t really have to worry about melting them. Of course if it’s cold where you live and your palm and coconut oil is super hard…go ahead and melt. But if your oils are nice and mooshy…don’t worry about it. So measure out all of the oils and butters and stick blend to mix smooth.

Step 3 – Add the sodium lactate to the lye water. Don’t worry about the temps when you’re hot processing. You don’t have to worry about the lye cooling down.

Step 4 – Gear up in goggles and gloves! Pour the lye solution into the crock pot of oils and mix until you reach trace.

Step 5 – Put the lid on your soap and set to cook. If you are new to hot process soap or are trying out a new crock pot I recommend cooking your soap on medium or if your crock pot has just low and high…set it on low.

Fifteen minutes after setting to cook…here is what we have. You can see the edges started to turn in.

And a bit later…the edges are closing in but there is still a part that hasn’t gelled or turned.

And now you can see it has completely gelled/turned. Give a good stir and let it cook about 5 minutes longer. Then check for zap. To test for zap I like to take a craft stick, put a dab of the soap on it, blow on it to cool and harden and lightly touch it to your tongue. If you get a zap…the soap is not done. Our is done!

Next we added the fragrance.

Since we wanted to color part of our batch we scooped some out into another container and colored with a bit of fuchsia lab color.

Now here’s the fun part! Ours is a bit gloppy (I miscalculated our SL) but Moya made it work! She alternated scooping and packing the different colored soap into the mold. Check this out!

She made sure to pile the soap above the top of the mold. Then she used a spoon handle and scraped off the top to make it smooth and level. Put the extra soap into a cavity mold.